Computer systems are ubiquitous in today's work and home environments. The data stored on these computer systems, however, is vulnerable to theft, fire, flood, and other natural disasters. However, only 2% of home personal computers (PCs) are backed up regularly. PC users can perform their own backups using various media such as compact disks (CDs) or external hard drives. CDs and external hard drives can be expensive and also are vulnerable to theft, fire, flood, and other natural disasters. As a result, online backup services have been developed to provide backup of home PCs. The home PCs, or client computing devices, backup their files to and restore their files from server computing devices using a network such as the Internet.
A reliable, massive data storage system is needed to support a backup and restore system for a large number of client computing devices. Such a data storage system should support high data rates while moving files between the client computing devices and the file storage system. Additionally, such a system should provide for reliable data recovery in the event of a disk failure associated with the file storage system. Further, such a system should manage use of the bandwidth associated with the backup and restore of a large number of client computing devices.